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Register a new userDiscussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles
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Nicola Scafetta
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Power spectra of global surface temperature (GST) records reveal major periodicities at about 9.1, 10-11, 19-22 and 59-62 years. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) general circulation models (GCMs), to be used in the IPCC (2013), are analyzed and found not able to reconstruct this variability. From 2000 to 2013.5 a GST plateau is observed while the GCMs predicted a warming rate of about 2 K/century. In contrast, the hypothesis that the climate is regulated by specific natural oscillations more accurately fits the GST records at multiple time scales. The climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling should be reduced by half, e.g. from the IPCC-2007 2.0-4.5 K range to 1.0-2.3 K with 1.5 C median. Also modern paleoclimatic temperature reconstructions yield the same conclusion. The observed natural oscillations could be driven by astronomical forcings. Herein I propose a semi empirical climate model made of six specific astronomical oscillations as constructors of the natural climate variability spanning from the decadal to the millennial scales plus a 50% attenuated radiative warming component deduced from the GCM mean simulation as a measure of the anthropogenic and volcano contributions to climatic changes. The semi empirical model reconstructs the 1850-2013 GST patterns significantly better than any CMIP5 GCM simulation. The model projects a possible 2000-2100 average warming ranging from about 0.3 C to 1.8 C that is significantly below the original CMIP5 GCM ensemble mean range (1 K to 4 K).
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This article discussesl a few of the problems that arise in geophysical fluid dynamics and climate that are associated with the presence of moisture in the air, its condensation and release of latent heat. Our main focus is Earths atmosphere but we also discuss how these problems might manifest themselves on other planetary bodies, with particular attention to Titan where methane takes on the role of water. GFD has traditionally been concerned with understanding the very basic problems that lie at the foundation of dynamical meteorology and ocean-ography. Conventionally, and a little ironically, the subject mainly considers `dry fluids, meaning it does not concern itself overly much with phase changes. The subject is often regarded as dry in another way, because it does not consider problems perceived as relevant to the real world, such as clouds or rainfall, which have typically been the province of complicated numerical models. Those models often rely on parameterizations of unresolved processes, parameterizations that may work very well but that often have a semi-empirical basis. The consequent dichotomy between the foundations and the applications prevents progress being made that has both a secure basis in scientific understanding and a relevance to the Earths climate, especially where moisture is concerned. The dichotomy also inhibits progress in understanding the climate of other planets, where observations are insufficient to tune the parameterizations that weather and climate models for Earth rely upon, and a more fundamental approach is called for. Here we discuss four diverse examples of the problems with moisture: the determination of relative humidity and cloudiness; the transport of water vapor and its possible change under global warming; the moist shallow water equations and the Madden-Julian Oscillation; and the hydrology cycle on other planetary bodies.
During the last few years a number of works have proposed that planetary harmonics regulate solar oscillations and the Earth climate. Herein I address some critiques. Detailed analysis of the data do support the planetary theory of solar and climate variation. In particular, I show that: (1) high-resolution cosmogenic 10Be and 14C solar activity proxy records both during the Holocene and during the Marine Interglacial Stage 9.3 (MIS 9.3), 325-336 kyr ago, present four common spectral peaks at about 103, 115, 130 and 150 yrs (this is the frequency band that generates Maunder and Dalton like grand solar minima) that can be deduced from a simple solar model based on a generic non-linear coupling between planetary and solar harmonics; (2) time-frequency analysis and advanced minimum variance distortion-less response (MVDR) magnitude squared coherence analysis confirm the existence of persistent astronomical harmonics in the climate records at the decadal and multidecadal scales when used with an appropriate window length (110 years) to guarantee a sufficient spectral resolution. However, the best coherence test can be currently made only by comparing directly the temperature and astronomical spectra as done in Scafetta (J. Atmos. Sol. Terr. Phys. 72(13), 951-970, 2010). The spectral coherence between planetary, solar and climatic oscillations is confirmed at the following periods: 5.2 yr, 5.93 yr, 6.62 yr, 7.42 yr, 9.1 yr (main lunar tidal cycle), 10.4 yr (related to the 9.93-10.87-11.86 yr solar cycle harmonics), 13.8-15.0 yr, 20 yr, 30 yr and 61 yr, 103 yr, 115 yr, 130 yr, 150 yr and about 1000 year. This work responds to the critiques of Cauquoin et al. (Astron. Astrophys. 561, A132, 2014) who ignored alternative planetary theories of solar variations, and of Holm (J. Atmos. Sol. Terr. Phys. 110-111, 23-27, 2014) who used inadequate physical and time frequency analysis of the data.
Climate models are complicated software systems that approximate atmospheric and oceanic fluid mechanics at a coarse spatial resolution. Typical climate forecasts only explicitly resolve processes larger than 100 km and approximate any process occurring below this scale (e.g. thunderstorms) using so-called parametrizations. Machine learning could improve upon the accuracy of some traditional physical parametrizations by learning from so-called global cloud-resolving models. We compare the performance of two machine learning models, random forests (RF) and neural networks (NNs), at parametrizing the aggregate effect of moist physics in a 3 km resolution global simulation with an atmospheric model. The NN outperforms the RF when evaluated offline on a testing dataset. However, when the ML models are coupled to an atmospheric model run at 200 km resolution, the NN-assisted simulation crashes with 7 days, while the RF-assisted simulations remain stable. Both runs produce more accurate weather forecasts than a baseline configuration, but globally averaged climate variables drift over longer timescales.
Tipping elements in the climate system are large-scale subregions of the Earth that might possess threshold behavior under global warming with large potential impacts on human societies. Here, we study a subset of five tipping elements and their interactions in a conceptual and easily extendable framework: the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Amazon rainforest. In this nonlinear and multistable system, we perform a basin stability analysis to detect its stable states and their associated Earth system resilience. Using this approach, we perform a system-wide and comprehensive robustness analysis with more than 3.5 billion ensemble members. Further, we investigate dynamic regimes where some of the states lose stability and oscillations appear using a newly developed basin bifurcation analysis methodology. Our results reveal that the state of four or five tipped elements has the largest basin volume for large levels of global warming beyond 4 {deg}C above pre-industrial climate conditions. For lower levels of warming, states including disintegrated ice sheets on West Antarctica and Greenland have higher basin volume than other state configurations. Therefore in our model, we find that the large ice sheets are of particular importance for Earth system resilience. We also detect the emergence of limit cycles for 0.6% of all ensemble members at rare parameter combinations. Such limit cycle oscillations mainly occur between the Greenland Ice Sheet and AMOC (86%), due to their negative feedback coupling. These limit cycles point to possibly dangerous internal modes of variability in the climate system that could have played a role in paleoclimatic dynamics such as those unfolding during the Pleistocene ice age cycles.
Any type of non-buoyant material in the ocean is transported horizontally by currents during its sinking journey. This lateral transport can be far from negligible for small sinking velocities. To estimate its magnitude and direction, the material is often modelled as a set of Lagrangian particles advected by current velocities that are obtained from Ocean General Circulation Models (OGCMs). State-of-the-art OGCMs are strongly eddying, similar to the real ocean, providing results with a spatial resolution on the order of 10 km on a daily frequency. While the importance of eddies in OGCMs is well-appreciated in the physical oceanographic community, other marine research communities may not. To demonstrate how much the absence of mesoscale features in low-resolution models influences the Lagrangian particle transport, we simulate the transport of sinking Lagrangian particles using low- and high-resolution global OGCMs, and assess the lateral transport differences resulting from the difference in spatial and temporal model resolution. We find major differences between the transport in the non-eddying OGCM and in the eddying OGCM. Addition of stochastic noise to the particle trajectories in the non-eddying OGCM parameterises the effect of eddies well in some cases. The effect of a coarser temporal resolution (5-daily) is smaller compared to a coarser spatial resolution (0.1$^{circ}$ versus 1$^{circ}$ horizontally). We recommend to use sinking Lagrangian particles, representing e.g. marine snow, microplankton or sinking plastic, only with velocity fields from eddying OGCMs, requiring high-resolution models in e.g. paleoceanographic studies. To increase the accessibility of our particle trace simulations, we launch planktondrift.science.uu.nl, an online tool to reconstruct the surface origin of sedimentary particles in a specific location.
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